Joined Dixieland group Pals of Harmony as violinist, 1927; wrote first song,
c. 1929; with pianist Saul Chaplin, wrote specialty songs for vaudeville
acts; wrote songs for big-band singers, including Ella Fitzgerald, mid-1930s;
wrote English lyrics to Yiddish song "Bei Mir Bist Du Schon (Means That Your
Grand)," 1937; worked for Vitaphone Studios writing music for short subjects
(PLEASE BE KIND was the first song written for a short subject which made
the hit parade), New York City, late 1930s; split from Chaplin and began
working with Jule Styne; their song I'LL WALK ALONE sold 1 million copies
of sheet music; worked with Frank Sinatra who teamed him with Jimmy Van Heusen,
early 1940s; worked with various composers; mounted Broadway show WORDS AND
MUSIC, 1974; toured with show, 1975-early 1990s. President of Songwriters
Hall of Fame.

1954, for "Three Coins in a Fountain," from THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN

1957, for "All the Way," from THE JOKER IS WILD

1959, for "High Hopes," from A HOLE IN THE HEAD

1963, for "Call Me Irresponsible," from PAPA'S DELICATE CONDITION.

1959 National Cash Box Award, , for HIGH HOPES

1972 Inducted into Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Call him irrepressible--Sammy Cahn always had a way with words. As a skinny,
bespectacled kid, it kept him out of trouble with his parents and the
neighborhood bullies. As an adult, his way with words made him one of the
most popular and successful lyricists of all time.

Young Samuel Cohen was not a good student in the classroom, but he studied
the theater voraciously; from an early age, he would cut classes to see movies
and watch vaudeville shows. One time when he had been at the theater instead
of at school, he was spotted by a friend of his mother, who reported Sammy's
truancy. He avoided punishment by brazenly lying his way out of the jam.

As a kid, he played the violin. But this was only a hobby until he was 13.
At his bar mitzvah, he saw his mother pay the musicians and realized he could
make money playing the violin. A year later he joined the small Dixieland
orchestra his mother had hired, the Pals of Harmony. The group played local
gigs and then began traveling to perform in hotels in Atlantic City and the
summer resorts of the Catskills.

Sammy Cohen, who adopted the professional surname Cahn, wrote his first song
when he was about 16 years old. As he recalled in his autobiography, I Should
Care, "It was actually Jackie Osterman at the Academy of Music on 14th Street
who inspired my song writing career. ... In the middle of the act, [Osterman]
took a change of pace and said he'd like to sing a song he'd written. It
was a fascinating thing for me to be actually looking at a songwriter--in
person. ... Walking home ... I began to frame a song in my head. By the time
I reached home I had actually written a lyric. ... The song was a piece of
idiocy called "Like Niagara Falls, I'm Falling for You--Baby!" But if, as
... somebody said, a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step,
that was the first step." Soon he teamed up with the pianist from the Pals
of Harmony, Saul Caplan (it was Sammy who insisted he change his name to
Chaplin), and a songwriting team was born.

The duo of Cahn and Chaplin soon began to have some success at writing specialty
numbers for vaudeville acts, but they could not get their songs published.
Then one day in 1935, a friend told them that the bandleader Jimmy Lunceford,
who was then playing at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, needed a song. They
wrote "Rhythm Is Our Business," which was recorded for the Decca label and
became a modest hit. They began to write for other big-band stars like Ella
Fitzgerald ("If You Ever Should Leave"), were accepted as members of ASCAP
(the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers), and were on
their way.

The song that made Cahn and Chaplin famous and rich enough for Cahn to buy
his parents a new house was the specialty number "Bei Mir Bist Du Schon (Means
That You're Grand)." Cahn heard this Yiddish song at the Apollo Theater and
thought an English version would work well. He had trouble selling the idea
at first, but then an as-yet-unknown sister act from the Midwest heard the
song. Cahn explained in his autobiography: "One day Lou (Levy) brought the
Andrews Sisters, Patty, Maxene, and LaVerne up to our apartment. On the piano
was this copy of a song in Yiddish. Patty asked ... 'How does it go?' I played
it for them, and they started to sing right along and to rock with it. 'Gee,'
said Patty, 'can we have it?' Cahn penned English lyrics to the song, the
Andrew Sisters recorded it, and it shot both Cahn and the Sisters to national
fame, eventually selling over one million copies.

During the late 1930s the team of Cahn and Chaplin wrote under contract for
New York City's Vitaphone Studios, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. that produced
short feature films. The duo wrote songs sung in these films by performers
such as Betty Hutton, Bob Hope, and Edgar Bergen. In 1940 Vitaphone Studios
closed, and Cahn and Chaplin, still under contract to Warner Bros., moved
out to Hollywood. But they had no luck with the western studios, got no
commissions, and parted ways.

About the time Cahn was becoming frantic from lack of work, he was asked
to write songs with composer Jule Styne. "From the beginning it was fun,"
he remembered. "He went to the piano and played a complete melody. I listened
and said 'Would you play it again, just a bit slower?' He played and I listened.
... I then said, 'I've heard that song before'--to which he said, bristling,
'What the hell are you, a tune detective?' 'No,' I said, 'that wasn't a
criticism, it was a title: "I've Heard That Song Before.'" This song,
the first of many Cahn and Styne hits, led to a fruitful series of film
collaborations. The duo wrote songs for the films
ANCHORS AWEIGH (1945),
TONIGHT AND EVERY NIGHT
(1945), WONDER MAN (1945),
THE KID FROM BROOKLYN
(1946), ROMANCE ON THE
HIGH SEAS (1948), and THE
WEST POINT STORY (1950). Their songs include "I'll Walk Alone," I Fall
in Love Too Easily," "Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night in the Week,"
"As Long as There's Music," "Come Out, Come Out," "Five Minutes More," and
"The Things We Did Last Summer."

Cahn wrote many songs specially for certain singers. After he met young Frank
Sinatra singing with the Tommy Dorsey Band, he provided Sinatra with a number
of songs that became hits and helped to make both men stars. In the early
1940s Sinatra was signed by MGM to appear in the musical ANCHORS AWEIGH;
he refused to sing unless Cahn wrote the material. In 1954 Cahn and Styne
wrote "Three Coins in the fountain" for Sinatra to sing in the film
THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN.
The song garnered Cahn his first Oscar.

In 1947 Cahn and Jule Styne created the score for the Broadway hit
HIGH BUTTON SHOES.
In 1955, Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen wrote the score for the TV version
of OUR TOWN and won the
Emmy for "Love and Marriage". Cahn and Van Heusen were responsible
for many swinging Sinatra hits, such as "Come Fly With Me," "My Kind of Town,"
"The Tender Trap" and "Hey, Jealous Lover".

During his long career, Cahn worked with many different composers. In 1957
Cahn and composer Jimmy Van Heusen won an Oscar for their song "All the Way,"
from the movie THE JOKER IS
WILD; they won another in 1959 for "High Hopes," from
A HOLE IN THE HEAD, and
in 1963 they won their third Oscar for the song "Call Me Irresponsible,"
from the film PAPA'S DELICATE
CONDITION. The duo also received Academy Award nominations for their
songs "To Love and Be Loved," "Second Time Around," "High Time," "My Kind
of Town," "Where Love Has Gone," "Thoroughly Modern Millie," "A Pocketful
of Miracles," and "Star." Cahn wrote special lyrics for "High Hopes"
to be used during President Kennedy's election campaign.

In 1974 Sammy Cahn starred in his own Broadway show,
WORDS AND MUSIC.
Two years earlier he had been asked to put together a show to run as part
of a now-legendary series at the 92nd Street YMCA called "Lyrics and Lyricists."
The audience loved him. When he finally took the act to Broadway, critics
raved, and Cahn became the toast of the town. His show ran for nine months
on Broadway and almost two decades on tour before declining health put an
end to Cahn's performing career.

Cahn died of congestive heart failure on January 15, 1993, at Cedars-Sinai
Medial Center in Los Angeles. In 1972 he had been inducted into the Songwriter's
Hall of Fame and had later served as its president. He had labored hard to
establish a Songwriter's Hall of Fame Museum, and he never lost his love
for popular music of any variety. In 1992 he told Pulse! that he would love
to write songs for contemporary singers like belter Michael Bolton or superstar
Madonna. "My opinion of the music of today," he told Pulse!, "is simply put:
Whatever the number-one song in the world is at this moment, I wish my name
were on it."